The current organization of Christian societies is contrary to the true meaning of Christian law.
Almost all the power of human reason is directed not towards finding ways to ease the labor of the workers, but only towards finding ways to ease and adorn the idleness of the idlers.
The people of our time have established for themselves a life that is contrary to both the moral and the physical nature of the human being, and they exert all of their mental energies on trying to convince people that this is really what true life is. Everything that in our time goes by the name of culture: our sciences, arts and technological advances—all these things are merely attempts to deceive the human being’s moral demands.
If one were to take a look at our world, how much folly one would see, how many tears one would shed, with what laughter one would laugh, how much hatred one would feel! We truly act in such a way that our deeds are at once ridiculous, foolish, pitiful and hateful. Here is a man feeding dogs to hunt wild animals, and he himself acts like an animal; another is feeding oxen and donkeys to transport stones, and yet he despises people who are dying from hunger; he spends copious amounts of gold to carve people out of stone, and the real people, those whom misfortune had turned to stone, he leaves destitute. Another collects little precious stones and exerts much effort decorating walls with them, but the sight of people’s limbs do not at all touch him. Some people devise clothes to protect their clothes, while others have nothing even to cover their naked bodies.
One spends all his money on prostitutes and idlers, another on comedians and dancers, yet another on opulent buildings, on the purchase of estates and mansions. One spends his time counting interest, another counts interest on interest, yet another composes papers filled with a multitude of murders, unable to rest even at night as he works sleeplessly on other people’s ruin. Dawn has hardly broken when someone rushes after unrighteous profits, while another spends them on debauchery, and yet others go to steal from the state. In general, people worry so much about the superfluous or the criminal, and do not even give a passing thought to what is necessary.
— John Chrysostom
Just as it is contrary to the law of nature that a child should govern adults or that a man who is insane should govern one who is wise, so it is contrary to the law of nature that a handful of people should be satiated to excess while a hungry crowd is deprived of necessities.
— Rousseau
In the age of cannibalism, people had consumed one another simply by eating each other’s bodies. But, despite all the laws that people have established, despite the successes of the sciences, powerful, heartless people to this day continue to live at the expense of the weak, the unfortunate and the foolish. True, they no longer eat their flesh, they do not drink their blood, but they still live off their privations and needs. The poor, who cripple themselves with work and spend the whole of their lives worrying about feeding themselves and their families, are essentially eaten by their fellow men. As one looks upon the disintegration of the civilized world, its troubles and tears, its shattered dreams and pitiful reality, its famines and crimes, humiliation and shame, one is forced to conclude that cannibalism was not a crueler way of living at another’s expense.
— Lucy Mallory
There has always been and always will be only one task worth dedicating one’s whole life to. This task is to lovingly interact with people and to destroy the barriers that they have erected between each other.
